Working backwards

I want to tell a little story about design processes, or really, my lack thereof. This is Chowdown, a little recipe project I've been working on.

Chowdown took shape completely in the browser. I never even opened design software. I figured big photos would be enough.

Now that I'm getting a little deeper, I'm finding some rough edges that need some fine tuning. Instead of staying with code, I wanted to hop back into the prototyping phase.

Only drawback, I had a bunch of great content already constructed, and wanted to bring it with me. Here's where it gets interesting: someone made a JSON plugin for Sketch.

That means I can pull my live recipes into a JSON file [like so] and then use Sketch to import titles, photos, and more [like so].

From there, I'm able to load these screens into InVision, which recently launched smartwatch prototyping, which is perfect for sharing with people that don't actually have a watch (yet).

What's more, I can post from InVision straight into Dribbble (what I'm doing with this shot), so I can share more screens and ideas without touching any code. AND it uses my live recipes and photos, which is the real kicker.

Moral of the story: I'm like 4 months in to this side project and JUST touched a design tool for the first time, and that's ok.